Public Policy is social agreement written down as a universal guide for social action. We at The Policy ThinkShop share information so others can think and act in the best possible understanding of "The Public Interest."

We can all agree that extremely intelligent people can disagree and sometimes succumb to irrational feelings, misunderstandings and conflict. It is not enough to be smart. It is also important to get along with people, to understand them, and to express ourselves in pleasant ways that help us all get along.

We all at one time or another let our emotions carry us to places we thought we could never reach and some places and situations we never intended to be in. Emotions are an important part of our successes and failures and that includes the emotions that drive the actions of others who impact our journey. It is hard to imagine that learning to manage our emotions and to better understand the emotions of others is not an extremely desirable thing that we can pursue in a straightforward manner. But for many it is not. The concepts that cover this important topic, “emotional literacy” and “emotional competence” can be summarized in the operational definition of emotional intelligence.

Definition of Emotional Intelligence (EQ): “… the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions. We posit that life tasks such as those described by Cantor and her colleagues and constructive thinking defined by Epstein are laden with affective information, that this affective information must be processed (perhaps differently than the cognitive information), and that individuals may differ in the skill with which they do so. Emotional intelligence is also a part of Gardner’s view of social intelligence, which he refers to as the personal intelligences. Like social intelligence, the personal intelligences (divided into inter- and intra­ personal intelligence) include knowledge about the self and about others. One aspect of the personal intelligence relates to feelings and is quite close to what we call “emotional intelligence.” John Mayer and Peter Salovey, 1990

Emotional intelligence (also known as “EQ”) is an idea that grew up in academia, was popularized on pop psychology shelves and, more recently, has been made useful in leadership development and organizational management circles. From its conception, it was juxtaposed to the idea of Intelligence Quotient (IQ). Its lofty intellectual beginnings notwithstanding, EQ has been embraced by so many for so many reasons that its early paradigmatic intentions may now be lost to the many.

If the intelligence scale we call “IQ” has been controversial, EQ has been equally misunderstood. Even if we can all agree on a definition and on appropriate applications of EQ theory, it’s behavioral health benefits cannot be implemented through quick short-term programs nor can it’s salutary outcomes be made sustainable without a significant transformation in our health education and K through 12 school educational systems. Many of the individuals, that could benefit from the competencies that learning and having good EQ promises, are neither fortunate enough to access the education nor in social circumstances conducive to self improvement pursuits. In a more mindful and egalitarian world, more complex ideas may achieve greater buoyancy and utility. EQ is no exception.

Popular ideas live in the minds of the many and, perhaps because of their simplicity and utility, become sustainable and prolific for both producers and consumers. The dilemma is, however, that society often needs ideas that are more complex in order to solve and address vexing modern problems. To Goleman’s credit, in part due to his efforts, EQ is being applied through his numerous consulting activities and, for example, in his supportive role helping to organize a set of conferences that led to the publication of a 1997 book by John Mayer and Peter Salovey (Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence: Educational Implications) addressing possible emotional intelligence and social skills applications to address child development and conflict resolution in school systems (the academic team that initially developed the “theory” that led to EQ as a useful framework for researching and teaching the role that emotions play in achieving personal, social, and organizational success). Aside from this collaboration, though, much of what is popularly understood about EQ has been disseminated through Goleman’s consulting and pop psychology success NYTs best seller style.

Academic ideas and constructs more often tend to be quite different from popular ideas. They differ in that their currency tends to require intellectual specialization, academic environments akin to monasteries, and individuals with a broad understanding of the numerous currents and variables that give academic products their place in the refereed conversation of the nation’s professorial ranks. Emotional intelligence is an important flashpoint for forces with differing origins yet, ideally, common destinations–thinking individuals wanting to promote social good and noble ends. Daniel Goleman and Adam Grant are two such forces; they are social communicative pundits in the ongoing tug of war that will define the proper and productive utility, and place, of emotional intelligence, as a leadership and workforce development concept. According to Grant, Goleman goes too far in trying to apply EQ to business intelligence, heretofore an area reserved for things more mathematical and tangible. Goleman has been given a professional home on the pages of the prestigious Harvard Business Review, an instrument of both Grant and Goleman’s alma matter. A key question would be: Is EQ being misapplied or is the environment where it needs to be applied unready for its heuristic promises? Given the challenges, faced or ignored, by today’s business and organizational leaders, can we afford to dismiss this popular tool?

Adam Grant published a provocative article on LinkedIn formulating a critique of Goleman’s more global approach to EQ. Unfortunately, Grant’s article includes academic claims and posturing that is clouded by his overall trivial tone. We need a greater focus on academic rigor and the pursuit of more robust theoretical constructs that can yield progress towards EQ program development and implementation, in the area of behavioral health, for example. This seriousness seems to be lacking at the present time–certainly in Grant’s article (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140930125543-69244073-emotional-intelligence-is-overrated?trk=prof-post).

We may be exceedingly amazed to see academics, intellectuals, pundits, and intellectual entrepreneurs spar, in the marketplace of ideas, in order to promote their worth and place in the market. The debate seems omnipresent as it crosses many borders through the Harvard Business Review, on blogs, and here on LinkedIn. Certainly, Adam Grant steps into the breach and tries to hold Goleman to task for what he sees as academic obfuscation. Interestingly, he borders on ad hominem intentions and plain teasing. Perhaps Adam Grant is pandering to this electronic social media medium and finds such rhetorical tools necessary. Perhaps the conversation that is sought here with leaders understands that today’s leaders are not Plato’s philosopher kings. Indeed, Grant does not seem to see the business of management outside of specific emotional terrain so touchy feely as Goleman would. It is plain to see that Daniel Goleman’s place is secure, as the high priest of pop psychology, because his Ph.D. in Psychology and his perch on the NYTs allowed him to popularly run with the “EQ” concept and build an entrepreneurial empire which may outlive him and the rest of us. To be sure, the spoils from the ensuing popular media endeavors have favored Goleman’s lot, EQ’s intellectual forefathers have not similarly gained (John Mayer and Peter Salovey). This does not bode well for future intellectuals lacking entrepreneurial prowess. You will find Mr. Grant on LinkedIn though, promoting his intellectual wares; he’ll do just fine.

Interestingly, we can look at Salovey’s dissertation from way back in 1986 for the early intellectual ground from which the concept of EQ grew (P. Salovey, The Effects of Mood and Focus of Attention on Self-Relevant Thoughts and Helping Intention, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1986). We can also look at the role of popular psychology in our culture to find similar ground for Goleman’s efforts and success. Mayer and Salovey are the original promoters of the ideas and of the intellectual history which gave intellectual buoyancy to the concept. Daniel Goleman refers to his encounter with the work of these two men in a passing way and diminishes their importance by alluding to the lack of stature of the journal in which they published the original 1990 article “Emotional Intelligence.” Goleman has turned the work of these men into a cottage industry and his published retort to Grant shows his ability to popularly promote the term “EQ” in contrast to feebly defending it. Perhaps Goleman is safe behind the popularity curtain always protecting his wizard like reputation. Up and coming scholar, Adam Grant, rightly exposes Goleman’s use of the concept as less relevant outside the parameters of academic rigor and of the realms of possible scientific discipline and emotive applications. The academic trial only seems to be beginning, though, and the popular court is woefully incapable of sequestering an appropriate jury to reach a useful verdict that would bridge the cerebral gap between academic thinkers, intellectual entrepreneurs and the laboring rank and file. Given EQ’s arguably heuristic potential and the millions that are being made from its application or misapplication, we can’t have some thinking of it as business and the rest of us as “nobody’s business.”

The concept has grown to mean so many things to so many people that it now means specifically very little within the confines of academic, intellectual or theoretical query. Salovey and Mayer’s contributions to modern management and leadership are now popularly distant from their original rigorous work. The popular development of that work may possibly have obstructed the original potential of Salovey and Mayer’s ideas and constructs, further obfuscating the road to needed progressive managerial and leadership applications. Goleman has made it common coin and personal gain–neither being efforts which have contributed significantly in taking the concept further along its original intellectual journey; nor has it helped in the building of necessary theoretical constructs that can give us an applied framework that allows for clarity regarding how and when it is useful as a heuristic model for organizational, group, or individual purposes. To be sure, Goleman now makes these claims; but his arguments are devoid of the rigor evident in the original works of the real pioneers from which the potentially useful constructs originate.

Centuries have passed since the monastic catacombs of the original academy, with its religious literati and the ensuing work of the eventually enlightened philosophers and scientists. That is work that was preserved and discriminatingly shared through coveted books and into modernity. But all that has now changed and continues to change. Academia is only one voice in a cacophony of social and intellectual media now fueled by e-commerce and consumed on billions of instantaneous screens. Ideas are now increasingly, and literally, in the clouds, ubiquitous cannon fodder for daily consumption; their value and retention seems now to be more tethered to the common cause than to the lofty undertaking. Can you imagine that?

Does your community relations model incorporate new technologies, social media and senior citizens? Why not? Is your marketing vision inclusive of recent technological change and all its potential? Do you see technology as something that is inherently for the young? Think again…

When it comes to community organizing, community building and solving local problems don’t leave seniors out. Do not assume that age alone is keeping baby boomers out of the social scene. According to PEW there is a growing potential in the way seniors are using new technology and it may have very positive implications for your community organizing goals …

As of April 2012, 53% of American adults ages 65 and older use the internet or email. Though these adults are still less likely than all other age groups to use the internet, the latest data represent the first time that half of seniors are going online. After several years of very little growth among this group, these gains are significant.

Overall, 82% of all American adults ages 18 and older say they use the internet or email at least occasionally, and 67% do so on a typical day.

Once online, most seniors make internet use a regular part of their lives.

For most online seniors, internet use is a daily fixture in their lives. Among internet users ages 65 and older, 70% use the internet on a typical day. (Overall, 82% of all adult internet users go online on an average day.)

After age 75, internet and broadband use drops off significantly.

Internet usage is much less prevalent among members of the “G.I. Generation” (adults who are currently ages 76 and older)1 than among other age groups. As of April 2012, internet adoption among this group has only reached 34%, while home broadband use has inched up to 21%.

Seven in ten seniors own a cell phone, up from 57% two years ago.

A growing share of seniors own a cell phone. Some 69% of adults ages 65 and older report that they have a mobile phone, up from 57% in May 2010. Even among those currently ages 76 and older, 56% report owning a cell phone of some kind, up from 47% of this generation in 2010. Despite these increases, however, older adults are less likely than other age groups to own these devices. Some 88% of all adults own a cell phone, including 95% of those ages 18-29.

One in three online seniors uses social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Social networking site use among seniors has grown significantly over the past few years: From April 2009 to May 2011, for instance, social networking site use among internet users ages 65 and older grew 150%, from 13% in 2009 to 33% in 2011. As of February 2012, one third (34%) of internet users ages 65 and older use social networking sites such as Facebook, and 18% do so on a typical day. Among all adult internet users, 66% use social networking sites (including 86% of those ages 18-29), with 48% of adult internet users making use of these sites on a typical day.

By comparison, email use continues to be the bedrock of online communications for seniors. As of August 2011, 86% of internet users ages 65 and older use email, with 48% doing so on a typical day. Among all adult internet users, 91% use email, with 59% doing so on a typical day.”

“Marketing is rapidly becoming one of the most technology-dependent functions in business. In 2012 the research and consulting firm Gartner predicted that by 2017, a company’s chief marketing officer would be spending more on technology than its chief information officer was. That oft-quoted claim seems more credible every day.A new type of executive is emerging at the center of the transformation: the chief marketing technologist. CMTs are part strategist, part creative director, part technology leader, and part teacher. Although they have an array of titles—Kimberly-Clark has a “global head of marketing technology,” while SAP has a “business information officer for global marketing,” for example—they have a common job: aligning marketing technology with business goals, serving as a liaison to IT, and evaluating and choosing technology providers. About half are charged with helping craft new digital business models as well.Regardless of what they’re called, the best CMTs set a technology vision for marketing. They champion greater …”

According to Pew foundation research, technology is changing how we relate to one another. Gadgets and communication tools are so prevalent in our everyday lives that the impact is bound to be pervasive and profound. But what will this impact be? And how do you feel about it? Are you aware of how technology is changing how you communication to people in your life? Is it improving your overall quality of life or is it becoming a hindrance? You decide…

“The internet, cell phones and social media have become key actors in the lives of many American couples. Technology is a source of support and communication as well as tension, and couples say it has both good and bad impacts on their relationships.”

According to the Pew study:

The overall impact of technology on long term relationships

10% of internet users who are married or partnered say that the internet has had a “major impact” on their relationship, and 17% say that it has had a “minor impact.” Fully 72% of married or committed online adults said the internet has “no real impact at all” on their partnership.

74% of the adult internet users who report that the internet had an impact on their marriage or partnership say the impact was positive. Still, 20% said the impact was mostly negative, and 4% said it was both good and bad.

Tech as a source of support and communication

25% of married or partnered adults who text have texted their partner when they were both home together.

21% of cell owners or internet users in a committed relationship have felt closer to their spouse or partner because of exchanges they had online or via text message.

9% have resolved an argument with their partner online or by text message that they were having difficulty resolving in person.

Tech as a source of tension

25% of cell phone owners in a marriage or partnership have felt their spouse or partner was distracted by their cell phone when they were together.

8% of internet users in a committed relationship have had an argument with their spouse or partner about the amount of time one of them was spending online.

4% of internet users in a committed relationship have gotten upset at something that they found out their spouse or partner was doing online.

The Policy ThinkShop: Research to help you understand internet security and social media privacy.

If you are serious about keeping up with technology and social media you better get up to speed on the current disclosures detailing the lack of security and privacy on the internet…. Not only from BIG BROTHER (government) but from anyone interested in peeking.

“Besides beefing up their internal security, many of America’s big firms have been lobbying Congress to rein the NSA in. But there is reason to think that technological changes could run ahead of legal ones. In some leaked slides, the NSA describes a lot of its programmes as “fragile”, Dr Green notes, suggesting that it worries they can be thwarted without too much trouble. And techno-fixes offer something laws do not. There are dozens of signals-intelligence agencies in the world, some of which serve pretty unsavoury governments. Laws can affect only one agency at a time. Cyber-criminals will, naturally, ignore them entirely. But techno-fixes work against everyone.”

The Policy ThinkShop Comments on Other Social Media: BIG BROTHER IS LISTENING AND SHARING

BIG DATA is changing the world. Because it is predominantly a high tech, expensive and rapidly changing business endeavor, governments have to collaborate, borrow and share in order to play in the BIG DATA game.

What are the implications for the relationship between government control and individual privacy and freedom? When government morphs into a global player, sharing and collecting on the open market your personal data, what are the implications for protecting your own interests in relations to the interests of corporate giants and world stage political actors who are protecting pursuing their own interests and wants?

“The power of information is in the eyes of the beholder–especially public opinion. What we know and think about what others know is crucial for the future of privacy in our societies and perhaps freedom itself.”

Much of the talent in today’s organizations graduated before the 1995 and the post 90s digital revolution which made the internet all pervasive. Organizations will have to live with most of this talent for at least another decade and that cohort’s influence over organizational leadership and strategy may last a quarter century. The internet, big data, cloud computing, and social media, are changing the business environment. Knowledge management, marketing, and communications will increasingly become critical business strategy factors; but they will require a combination of scarce and specialized talents.

Your career, organization, business or team depend on digital inputs and outputs that increasingly rely on variables driven by the new eCommerce environment. Traditionally, your principal organizational and budgeting goals and concerns were driven by hardware and software considerations. We propose that there is a new ingredient needed for success in today’s rapidly changing and increasingly internet driven business environment. We at the Policy ThinkShop refer to this new ingredient as “brainware” and it can only be harvested in today’s evolving labor market. Identifying it, recruiting it and retaining it could be the difference between failure and success–whether you are an individual, an organization or a leader–the ability to bridge the gap between established business practice and evolving market opportunities will require seasoned business knowledge and mastery of the new eEconomy.

Organizational development and business strategy can be significantly more challenging in today’s rapidly evolving business climate. Today, building success increasingly means having the right leadership and the right team. Internally, having the right machines and software has been difficult enough; but the false dichotomy between people and information, the internal and external environments is now increasingly apparent. Organizational success, top talent and knowledge of the new eEconomy are now an important business Gestalt. Internet and social media savvy are not just more but may now be essential. This is because of the current gap between traditional organizational culture and new recruited talent. The Googles and the Facebooks have built radically different business models and organizational environments for their talent. How will your organization recruit and retain new and “different” talent to drive growing and increasingly more internet relevant organizational strategy, planning and work? For enlightened organizations who understand change and can transform to meet the needs of that change, this may now be the new human resource imperative.

The relationship between organizational development needs, market opportunities and technological change is rapidly changing. Gone are the days when organizations could monopolize information, keep it secret and use it as a long term advantage. The information revolution is here. Information is no longer a static internal product but the internal and external organizational environment itself, all pervasive, increasingly symbiotic and constantly evolving. Talent in the areas of information management, marketing and communications is increasingly digital, web and cloud based. Although hardware decision can be expensive and risky, “brainware” decisions may be most critical to the success of your business and perhaps your career. By “brainware” we mean the fine mix between perspective, technological savvy and business acumen.

The traditional market strategies of face to face contact, television, radio, print media and billboards are changing. This change has increased more rapidly than the slow pace of organizational development, staff development and entrenched leadership succession. Organizational development has always required talent. Today defining, recruiting and retaining talent may be the most important decision you make as an organizational leader and the greatest opportunity for those who possess the unique ingredients of seasoned knowhow and acumen and state of the art geek passion, skills and vision.

Again, a rapidly changing market requires new talent. Where do you find that talent and what does it look like? Whether you need that talent or you are talented in search of an organization where you can thrive, the relationship between technological change, organizational needs and implementing talent is increasingly becoming a critical success factor. Enterprises are made up of people, ideas, culture, communication, capital, customers, relationships, and many other moving parts–none move faster than technology and the ideas that drive it. Technology, especially its ability to drive commerce via the internet, is both a knowledge management and a people management challenge—but first we have to have the right people on our team to manage–finding them is not easy and may require significant tradeoffs.
Operationalizing ideas requires specialized skills and we assume that the talent we hire today, will deliver and sustain the actionable strategies that will deliver outcomes, ROI and ultimately organizational progress tomorrow.

A new economy is being born

The use of the internet by millions of people is forming a new type of market and, perhaps, even a new economy. It is all new because it is a different kind of communication with its own dynamics, purposes and rationale–it is increasingly driving commerce. Because it is understood to be “economic behavior” that is driven by keyboards, symbols and input that can be decoded, saved, quantified and analyzed, it has become a resource that is being studied in relation to buying and selling products, making reputations and promoting every manner of resource and idea. Public relations and marketing are two key fields that are likely to be transformed by the web and will in turn shape how public relations, marketing and the web are used to buy and sell, influence and promote. Social media is an ongoing conversation that increasingly interests those who seek to communicate a socially relevant message and promote ideas and products. Public relations and marketing experts now face the added burden of becoming technological geeks as the search for the holy grail of forming and communicating “message” is driven by computer and internet based business intelligence.

The web is constantly changing

The web and the tools and gadgets that feed the data lifecycle that perpetuate it are in constant change. Like teenagers who clamor to be at the local busy hangout with their friends, today’s public relations and marketing social media hopefuls find much to be anxious about. The social web has become more ubiquitous, instantaneous and seemingly personal; yet mining it or analyzing it can leave you with a pile of barely useful statistics. The web and its ever evolving social media platforms are here to stay and everyone knows that it is the new game in town. In theory, the worldwide web is all embracing and global–a seemingly limitless resource. Perhaps deceptively so, it is instant communion between individuals reaching out into the abyss and marketeers who are trying to listen to and understand the noise. Often it seems a cacophony of interactions barely intelligible to the statistician and only relevant to those who understand its analytic trends within a multilayered context of products, customers and local business strategies.

Two worlds with two divergent skill sets

The worlds of traditional consumption and private internet use are quite distant from one another. Finding a professional comfortable and able in these two worlds of face to face business and online, often anonymous, social media is uncommon. Mastering web analytics and business knowhow is not an easy task for the technologically savvy or the business expert. The knowledge areas that are needed to sustain a sophisticated web business strategy require unique and expensive human resources–when they exist.

Mining the web: The production of internet data and finding ways and people that can turn it into actionable business strategy

Turning computer use and web surfing information into useful knowledge is beyond most enterprises as they do not have the appropriate team in place. Even when you develop the appropriate web analytics dashboard the information collected must be interpreted and understood by yet another layer of professionals implementing cyber knowledge to drive local business strategy. Engaging online users and promoting your brand or a desired relationship requires followup and follow through which can be expensive–requiring appropriate data collection, business strategy development and evaluation. As people surf and connect millions of times very little really happens that is reliable, measurable and impactful. The internet economic actor’s behavior is little more than linear choices on a keyboard reacting to menu like choices. It is mostly anonymous and does not have the same import that traditional hand to hand communication did in the golden years of marketing and public relations. In fact, quick and perpetual access may not yield constants that can easily be measured to justify your ROI. Yet ignoring today’s social media trends and their growing role could spell disaster.

Activity in cyber may not be relevant, impactful or measurable in the local market

If you do not have a web presence you may risk being seen as out of touch and irrelevant. If you attempt to have a web presence it may be difficult to justify the investment. Given today’s challenged budgets and competition for new talent, using the web as a serious corporate strategy is still as new as it is uncertain. To be sure, the benefits of BIG DATA and analytics have made fortunes and built giants–for the average organization and corporation though, the economies of scale or ROI may not yet be possible. To be sure, relating to the public has become increasingly easy and constant and yet it has also become increasingly trepidatious. Navigating the worldwide web with the intention of having an impact, making an impression, perhaps changing minds and/or behavior, is akin to navigating limitless and uncertain waters. Like a menacing conundrum framed in a Joharian Window, you don’t know what you don’t know, you don’t know what others know about you, and so on. The internet is a new form of social relation and its role in interpersonal, organizational and group communication is still evolving. Managing your web relationship is mainly a knowledge management exercise. Web analytics and matrices can only go so far. There may be intangibles involved in the psychology and social relations aspects defining the role that the web is playing in your customer’s lives. These are not yet well understood or even useful. What you know, though, matters–that is for sure. What you are able to do with what you think you know is a function of your organization’s business intelligence–not just amount of information but the actual talent you have onboard.

Knowing what you don’t Know?

Knowledge management is one of today’s leadership mantras. Who knows? Perhaps more importantly, who’s talking? Similarly, who is talking about who? The web is all about getting attention and being heard. Measuring it and strategizing can be like blowing more sand into a desert wind. Just because it blows back at you in analytical ways does not necessarily mean you have achieved anything of import. Perhaps the most worthwhile public relations aspect to the web is relationship building, continuity and conversation. Like a dynamic and evolving focus group, the web can deliver deeper meaning, if impersonal and unreliable. If we don’t manage information we will not be part of the conversation though–so diving into the web and tracking our corporate experience may eventually yield public relations and marketing successes. Today it is no longer so much being at the table as it is being part of the conversation as subject and object. As a company, as an organizational leader, or as a marketing and/or public relations professional, you want to be talked about and you want to be “the commodity” that drives public relations and marketing value.

Business day to day pressures and costs may be out of sink with rapidly changing cyber realities

Business conversation is increasingly taking place in cyber space, webinars and online networks that meet up with you at breakfast and lay you to bed with a gentle tweet or the tone of an arriving email. From sun up to sun down the internet is the new dimension of life that never sleeps–but “Can you make it there?” Because communication is increasingly web relevant and dependent, most serious public relations and marketing leaders have their heads in the clouds, as the communication revolution takes yet another turn and moves away from the ether promising new efficacy in data management and access by giving us “a cloud cover.” It seems that gadget platforms, ways of networking and data mining change again before we can fully integrate new talent into our business model or organizational plan. Perhaps most importantly, and in these times of austerity and economic uncertainty, it is not a cheap game. The person you interviewed yesterday impressed you with that days flavor of technology and skills, by the time they are integrated into your team and really demonstrate potential, the platforms and social media areas they impressed you with may be passé. You are left with whatever real brains, work ethic, or talent they may have underneath the shiny latest internet wizardry that blinded your hopes and assured your now not so relevant business strategy which prompted you to hire them in the first place.

Public Relations is experiencing a boom and a crisis today. The seemingly unlimited universe being created today by a burgeoning online community is astonishing, seductive and daunting to many business and organizational leaders who have a nagging notion that they must personally and organizationally keep up or be shoved out of the game. There is no shortage of will to understand and keep pace, but is there time and opportunity to learn and think in order to amass perspective and knowhow for getting what you and your organization need to stay relevant and compete? On the other hand, keeping up requires talent and knowhow. The kind of talent and knowhow needed is not often understood by business and organizational leaders who struggle to strike an optimal balance between recruiting, hiring and retaining a social media savvy 20 something or a seasoned professional who speaks the social media lexicon yet lacks the stamina that comes from endless late hours of surfing while looking for the next seahorse ride on the latest social media platform. To be sure, technological prowess is nothing without brains and work ethic, perspective and intellectual wherewithal. The kind of je ne sais quoi that comes with midnight oil burning and liberal arts.

When it comes to recruiting and purchasing new media talent, buyer beware…

“Social channels and new technology have placed considerable evolutionary pressure on the PR industry, but developing content doesn’t mean disregarding traditional media. It is about getting contemporary platforms to work in harmony with …”

The Pew Foundation has an impressive network of websites promoting socially relevant and timely research that looks at emerging social trends and challenges in the areas of technology, social media, religion, politics, and others… The most recent issue addressing internet use, one of the main areas that Pew supports, includes a survey on internet use. The survey is important because we know, for obvious reasons, much about people using the internet but not so much about those absent from cyberspace. The report gives us interesting data and analysis on the nearly fifth of persons 18 years or older who by choice or constraint are not going online. This trend is interesting given the current explosion of handheld devises that make the internet ubiquitous and internet able gadgets an increasingly unavoidable necessity.

As you have become accustomed, The Policy ThinkShop does the research for you and provides a friendly place where you can come back and discuss what you found useful and relevant in your daily musings and/or work.

Be sure to come back and comment as your participation here will promote The Policy ThinkShop blog and keep our team working for you…

The full report is being provide here by The Policy ThinkShop. Enjoy: http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2013/PIP_Offline%20adults_092513_PDF.pdf

“As of May 2013, 15% of American adults ages 18 and older do not use the internet or email.

Asked why they do not use the internet:

34% of non-internet users think the internet is just not relevant to them, saying they are not interested, do not want to use it, or have no need for it.

32% of non-internet users cite reasons tied to their sense that the internet is not very easy to use. These non-users say it is difficult or frustrating to go online, they are physically unable, or they are worried about other issues such as spam, spyware, and hackers. This figure is considerably higher than in earlier surveys.

19% of non-internet users cite the expense of owning a computer or paying for an internet connection.

7% of non-users cited a physical lack of availability or access to the internet.

Even among the 85% of adults who do go online, experiences connecting to the internet may vary widely. For instance, even though 76% of adults use the internet at home, 9% of adults use the internet but lack home access. These internet users cite many reasons for not having internet connections at home, most often relating to issues of affordability—some 42% mention financial issues such as not having a computer, or having a cheaper option outside the home.”

Information is to behavior as technology is to understanding. Let me clarify. Technology is increasingly making it more “mobile” and convenient to obtain, process and include health related information in our daily activities and decision making. In fact, physicians and patients are likely to increasingly benefit from recent advances in more mobile and popular forms of social media tools–such as Apps–in their need to manage health related information as providers of care and consumers, respectively. Take for example Apps and search engines. These two increasingly popular and used tools for accessing and managing health information are increasingly impacting a physician’s ability to learn and deicide and a patient’s ability to “get a second opinion” or increase their health literacy as they are more able to ask question and get immediate answers from numerous sources without having to rely on the often limited patient doctor relationship. The Pew foundation does a nice job of keeping us up to date on how the internet is changing every aspect of our lives–including healthcare.

“Susannah Fox will deliver a keynote address to a symposium hosted by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University. She will discuss the Pew Research Center’s latest findings related to technology adoption and use in both the U.S. and abroad, with a particular focus on the social impact of the internet on health and health care.”

Given today’s liberalization of news information, few bastions remain where one can sift through the cacophony of media bites and babble to form an educated

opinion or assess an educated risk. The Economist is failing in this regard on the American debate on healthcare reform–The Affordable Care Act.

Healthcare reform in America is a struggle for power and wealth at the increasingly small American top and a life and death struggle for most of the people below.

If we loose respected journals like the Economist in these times of mass information as intellectual fodder for the masses, we will be left without an intellectual meeting place where concerned minds can gather to contemplate benchmarks and directions. Regarding The Affordable Care Act debate in America, not only has the current president failed to sell and communicate the important of ACA implementation, he has once again betrayed the needs of the many for the expedient and self serving calculus of preserving power and status by appealing to an imaginary center–not too different here from the pragmatic Bill Clinton on Welfare Reform. But we digress.

The Economist has been a reliable source for decades as it has proven to be an \”objective\” source of information on the complex world stage. It\’s recent coverage of the American scene, however, requires vision and focus if it is going to support the journal\’s reputation as one of the few sources that our college professors respected that were not refereed journals.

The headline of the above story, \”The Obamacare sofware mess,\” is as semantically charged as it is irrelevant to any of the public policy issues raised by a serious American healthcare market debate addressing the important issue of how healthcare is distributed, facilitated or accessed by people in need of healthcare services.

Semantics: The term \”Obamacare\” plays directly into the divisive and charged narrative that portrays the healthcare debate in America as a tug of war between an \”evil and un-American\” president and American freedom. The framing of the current full court press, by conservatives, to obstruct the American president, at all at all costs, and the popular will of a democracy, is akin to saying that Churchill failed to stop Hitler sooner or to foresee the costs of settling with Stalin because of his neonatally determined speech impediment. It is academically irresponsible and intellectually dishonest, at least on the pages of this fine journal, to stain this usually intellectually rigorous space with narratives that are more appropriate in pop news sources that entertain people who are looking to reinforce their own deeply held biases and/or myopic political world views.

The Economics has been a leading world source of factual information relevant to the business of serious policy discourse and sober business leadership.

The foregoing comments are submitted on behalf of the Policy ThinkShop blogging team.

As a not for profit, non partisan source of policy analysis and conversation, we rely heavily on sources like the Economist to promote reason and thoughtful

conversation on all things public policy….

Please reconsider your use of the American public policy discourse and reflect on your use of language to add to and further support our current cacophony of obstructionism and self promoting pragmatism in the pursuit of popular power and further public policy noise…

Technology changes fast and information technology seems to be moving at the speed of light as our work, the life of our kids and even the government’s role in our lives are all changing in ways that keep us guessing.

Just when you thought that you had beat the current technological transformation from desktop PC to handheld devices that use Apps to send micro and instantaneous information to colleagues, friends and family, the technological gadget market seems to be going through yet another transformation.

The players include the usual suspects from the hardware, software and new media industries. But what does this all mean for those of us who use these technologies for serious business and communication matters? Are these technologies being driven by what kids need to chat and play? Or are they serious productive tools that we can depend on as professionals? Are these gadgets disposable despite their high cost and are we being forced to be on a never ending technological change conveyor belt that stretches our ability to keep up with the learning curve and the bill?

The Policy ThinkShop follows technological change in the communications area to keep you informed of what matters, what changes and how it may affect your business and your career.

“UNTIL August 23rd few people would have described Steve Ballmer as “retiring”. Microsoft’s chief executive has played both tiger and Tigger: snarling (toothlessly, as it turned out) at Apple’s gadgets; and bouncing, with a whoop, onto conference stages to extol his company’s wares. But retiring he is, within a year.

Mr Ballmer’s departure is a surprise. He had announced a reorganisation of the company only in July and had hoped to oversee much of the change. Some celebrated his going: Microsoft’s share price went up by 7.3% on the day the news broke. Mr Ballmer has plenty of …”

If you know a young person going to or in college don’t miss the following resource brought to you by the folks at the Policy ThinkShop…

“College may be a blast, but it certainly doesn’t come without its stressors. Whether you’re anxious about money matters, cafeteria food, or a heavy workload, we’ve rounded up the best apps to help you manage it all. From cooking to note-taking, …”

Paper media has been king for centuries. But it has fundamentally and permanently changed with the advent of the keyboard. Access to the written word, and even writing and disseminating the written word is no longer the privilege of the few and mighty.

The relationship between the written word and the reader, long the nexus of intellectual, economic, political, religious and educational life, is being overcome by the notion of typing and reading digitally. The implications for big media, especially the newspaper network of previously influential business owners, are now increasingly clear. The implications for new media, talent development and recruitment are not so clear. Here in lies the needed awakening. Like the printing press, the keyboard with a little intellect behind it, can now make an incredible difference. Micro publishing and social media are only beginning to show this. There is much more to come. How do we prepare? How do we have this conversation?

Where does one go to school today to become a master blogger, a webpage maven or a social media ace? Literary pundits, internet bloggers and computer geeks have never been seen as part of the same endeavor much less products of the same school. Today’s public relations, marketing, business and public health schools better be taking notes, because literature and communication in general–of the paper and pen kind–are seriously being challenged by the keyboard and the web page relationship. Public relations, marketing and media campaigns of all kinds (public health, political and sports, to name a few) are also being tested as the internet is where consumers, with their keyboards and their internet participation, are increasingly focused. That connectedness of being able to buy, communicate and make decisions in real time is what trumps paper and traditional media.

The long dark night of the printing press and papers has now begun. The paper and magazine media that is not able to awaken to today’s technological realities will disappear into an endless morning of wondering and retooling–sure to deplete investors and formerly interested parties. Those who awaken, diversify and invest in the new brave world of megabytes, html and the cloud will survive and perhaps thrive. The internet of things is not likely to include newspapers and magazines made of pulp and ink. Intelligence, language and knowledge itself is changing. Big data, knowledge management and gorilla marketing have begun to fill the epicenter of the communications spectacle and paper media lays wet and lethargic on the familial driveway as Americans get their news from the passive TV tube and the new digital generation gets it on the computer, tablet, or the smart phone. The internet represents a new layer of the national economy that seems to pervade everything and is still transforming previously stable information when it was a commodity more easily controlled. At last social media seems to be placing the reader in the drivers seat but nobody seems to know who is “driving.” Publishers, advertisers and Madison Avenue seem to be playing catchup only to be perplexed by more change. The world is once again changing. How people think, read and work is being changed as well. Perhaps change does not describe the extent of what is happening. This time the world is transforming; and our ability to read about it is morphing as well. At last, today’s newspaper moguls may be going the way of the paper tiger. The connection with many publics is being weakened and may never be recuperated. Who will win the publics’ ears and minds in the coming digital decades?

Who will generate the content that will be needed to feed the insatiable, 24 hour social media machine? There was a time when the written word was locked on paper as an expensive commodity–only for the eyes of rulers, religious leaders, and the most wealthy. As time passed, and the Magna Carta, industrialization, the printing press, political parties, unionization, and urbanization, all served to create rule by the people and for the people, the written word became as omnipresent and ubiquitous as falling leaves in the American autumn. But media is no longer simply domestic. It is global and instantaneous… It is micro publishing gone wild!

Today the written word has become digital and the mechanization of the reading experience has rendered the delivery of news, and eventually education, instantaneous, inexpensive, and convenient. The top universities are experimenting with free online courses. Gone are the days when people had to wait for the morning paper. The digital word has become as prevalent and fast as the spoken word; yet more effective because an entire warehouse of it can be sent to one million people with a click and it can be stored in perpetuity in the most convenient and inexpensive of gadgets. The economic model of media distribution has changed in profound ways and the implications are not yet fully understood. Today, the paper media is about to go the way of the 8 track and the Philips Tube radio.

New media now defines what is seen, understood and perhaps acted on. It will definitely influence power relationships and governing itself. This also has implications for how the polity gets its news and how nation states are able to control information within its borders. The genie is out of the bottle–turning the populous into today’s version of “literati.” It’s fascinating to see how the written Magna Carta relied on men of power and influence while today’s newspapers struggle to survive pandering to the masses at the alter of populism. At last, more may not be more. What seems most important is the relationship between the written (typed) word and the reader. Take a look at all the notables and institutions mentioned in the Magna Carta:

The Magna Carta (The Great Charter)

“Preamble: John, by the grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and count of Anjou, to the archbishop, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justiciaries, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his bailiffs and liege subjects, greetings. Know that, having regard to God and for the salvation of our soul, and those of all our ancestors and heirs, and unto the honor of God and the advancement of his holy Church and for the rectifying of our realm, we have granted as underwritten by advice of our venerable fathers, Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England and cardinal of the holy Roman Church, Henry, archbishop of Dublin, William of London, Peter of …”

Access to the written word, and even writing and disseminating the written word is no longer the privilege of the few and mighty. Technology continues to transform how knowledge is developed and shared. This has tremendous implications for an educated populous that can perhaps sustain even a more enlightened and egalitarian Democracy than the one we enjoy today.

“The stunning announcement on Monday of the sale of The Washington Post to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos caught many off guard. The Post has been owned by the Graham family for 80 years. But recent years brought steep revenue and circulation declines and as chief executive Donald Graham put it in a letter to the staff, “the newspaper business continued to bring up questions to which we had no answers.” In Bezos, The Post—and a handful of smaller papers owned by the company—get an owner who is considered one of the most successful business and technology entrepreneurs in the country. Bezos is considered to have a strong understanding of audience needs and the financial wherewithal to tolerate sluggish revenue numbers, at least for a while. Still, the challenges are large and not unique to The Post. Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project, which has been tracking the industry for over a decade, puts the sale in context.”

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